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For those of you who have followed the big fabulous life of Babette, here’s another chapter. Although I sometimes wonder why her life has become the source of pleasure for so many, once I turn on the news, I realize why.

There are reasons why people shouldn’t be tempted to buy sweet little piglets, even when they are tiny enough to wear a sock as a sweater and stand on one’s back. (Why we let her stand on us, I don’t know, because now she cannot understand why she doesn’t fit in our laps.) Sadly, like many of us over this miserable winter, Babs has grown large. Quite large. Neither one of us made an enemy of carbs this season. We drowned our sorrows over the cold in Girl Scout cookies and other assorted snack foods. She’s a big girl with big appetites and those who know me know I have trouble with the word “no” and even more trouble with that hateful buzzword, “moderation”. If giving a pig a Hershey’s kiss and some cheese ravioli is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I’ve tried. Believe me. I am helpless when she bats her long eyelashes at me and oinks that lovable oink. We’re about equally matched in size now and no force on earth can keep her from my cabinets. She can now nudge the refrigerator across the kitchen.

Using her heart shaped pink nose, she has systematically plowed up three acres of grass and pulled out every expensive perennial, some over 25 years old. I had a beautiful peony, of the most delicate ballerina pink, that was planted by the original owner of my house years ago. It must have been delicious. If only I had planned to go into farming, she’d have been a great employee hired to plow. But, the time of aeration and seeding arrives soon and I’d rather not look like the white trash we are rapidly becoming, and so I am being forced to introduce her to the barnyard.

Babette is not popular there. At the house, she was the undisputed queen. Once she won the dogs over by showing them how to get into the cabinets, she reined supreme. At the barn, she is hated universally. Our large, old, rescue pig, Orson, has twice tried to kill her. Orson has not been seen standing up in three years. His eyes are mashed shut because he is so fat. His tusks curl up in an evil smile. He is rendered invisible because of the constant array of chickens using him for a warm perch. I have hardly even seen him eat, yet something must fuel all that bulk. He is really just a lump in the corner of the barn, noiseless and forgotten. When I am in the barn, he has always just pretended I wasn’t there. Upon the arrival of Babs, he heaved himself up and came at her like a stealth missile. He then came after me, just for being her friend. My genius old sheep, Clementine, who literally walks on only two legs, has also arisen and bitten her repeatedly while Babette cries and wonders how she dropped into this nightmare.

One of Babette’s tricks is turning around to get a treat. Usually, I have to ask her several times while she blinks and looks at me as if to say, “Really? Why waste the energy? You know you’re going to give it to me anyway.”. When she saw I was leaving, she commenced to spinning like a top to get my attention. Walking away from her squealing for me was worse than leaving Cricket on her first day of preschool.

At the end of the day, I went down and brought her back to the house to sleep in her bed. She ran into the house and straight for The Goose. Then, using the special noise heretofore used only with me, she began to tell him what I can only guess was, “Do you know what that @$%^& did to me today? She took me to Hell! She lifted me OFF THE GROUND (shudder) and then, she left me there, with no chocolate, no treats, with a bunch of ANIMALS! (another shudder)” The Goose, sucker that he is, then lay down on the floor and proceeded to tell her how awful I am and how she doesn’t belong down there, princess that she is.

That pig is smart. She flirted and shamelessly threw herself at him all night, rolling over to expose a giant swollen underbelly so fecund and obscene that I felt embarrassed and looked away. When he sat in a chair, she tried to climb up into his lap.

When he left the room, she launched herself up on the sofa with me and tried to look interested in what I was watching. She pretended to bite my foot and then pulled back and chuckled to make herself seem funny and endearing. She struck several fetching poses accompanied with sighs so mournful one would think someone has uttered “bacon”. She politely moved away from the dogs‘ bowls when I asked her to, and when I said “bedtime”, she marched purposely towards her crate, pausing only to root me lovingly.

I know what she’s doing. I have raised two kids. I know “being on best behavior” when I see it.

Still, I can’t keep her from destroying our yard and I can’t let her stay out when we travel and even The Goose won’t let her go to the lake with us, despite my deep desire to see her in a life jacket, thus, she is moving in with the animals.

It’s not forever. I’m working hard to overcome separation and guilt. I’ve only walked down to see her four times today. I just took her two doughnuts and some celery (she is on a diet, after all). She can still come in and sleep at night. She will always be welcome come out and chase balls with the dogs. I am already envisioning a small barn addition, painted a buttercream yellow, with window boxes, a cushy paisley pillow and, perhaps, a bench for me. Just because one lives in a barn doesn’t mean one has to live like an animal, you know.

Yesterday, I went to a fun football party. Not fun because of football, which I don’t understand nor have any desire to watch, but because it was with lots of old high school friends and included jello shots and Triscuits, my favorite things ever.

On the way home, the Goose was driving (as usual as it would threaten his masculinity otherwise) and I yelled “Stop! There’s a good one!” and we pulled over to bag up a juicy piece of roadkill.

Uh huh, roadkill. This is all because I had a black vulture waiting in the barn for me at home.

I don’t accept birds. I know almost nothing about them. I work with small mammals and deer. The only thing I know about birds is that if someone finds small birds on the ground NOT to move them, they haven’t fallen from the nest, they are fledglings and their mom is somewhere nearby in a panic because some fool is messing with her babies.

Even knowing nothing, I took this bird because some super nice people called me after striking out with 11 other rehabbers. I caved in and told them to bring him over. He was beautiful. I’ll admit that some of the vulture’s manners are less than perfect, but they really are cool birds. I called the bird guru, The Pagan Raptor Goddess, but she wasn’t taking vultures. She is a wealth of info and I always want to give a shout out to her organization, Hawktalk.org.

This morning, after having my hand shredded by this glorious creature, I finally got him down to Chattahoochee Nature Center. The only good thing about the bloody injury on my part was that my son’s friend with diabetes jumped forward and gave me a quickie blood test, which came out a little low but he suggested it was a left over jello shot problem. Saved me a $35 annual physical copay.

The good folks at the nature center, who do great work with wildlife and are responsible for sending me Tortellini and Tiki, our emu, were happy to take him and I felt great when I left. On my way home, top down, radio up, sun shining, I got the call that his wing was shattered and he was being euthanized at that moment.

Now, I’ve grown a thick skin over my years of rehab. I’ve had to put down lots of animals and my poor Goose has helped me with even more. It’s horrible but necessary. Some stories, though, just get to me. What got to me is that I had spent the entire ride telling this magnificent bird to just hold on, help was close by.

Of course, I KNOW he didn’t understand, I get that a bird that can’t fly will mentally fall apart and I accept that this was the only option. It just caused a deep sadness.

I spent the rest of the ride listening to depressing music, being angry at the drivers ahead of me, regardless of my new kind thoughts toward others, and thinking back over the sad cases I’ve had. I once had a summer when a virus took 7 of my little fawns. Only one survived. The last one, the smallest, writhed and screamed in my arms for an hour until I finally had to concede he wouldn’t make it. He whimpered and wept like a baby and I cried along with him. After that summer, I took the next year off from animals.

I know the sad losses I’ve seen cannot compare with the sadness of others. My friend who held her son while he passed away, the family that lost their sweet little girl a few weeks ago, the Trophy Wife’s friend who lost her 16 year old son just yesterday to an accident, these tragedies are beyond my comprehension.

Mine are just little sadnesses that cause a heart to get harder and stronger, but sometimes, a little crack appears like today and I spend a half an hour or so being mad at God and not understanding why animals, who are wholly good, have to suffer.

I don’t have an answer or an upbeat ending except to think that all the years I’ve spend in church I’ve heard Jesus’ quote that “in my Father’s house there are many mansions”. I don’t want a mansion. What I’m desperately hoping for is a big beautiful barn where the souls of all the precious creatures that I’ve lost are finally safe, happy and whole.

When I finally moved to the country 15 years ago, we built a barn. Not having anything to put in it, I set about changing that. During my years as a designer, I sold many English paintings with sheep. I had come to love anything with sheep in it, paintings, prints, etchings, lamps with porcelain sheep, sweaters with sheep (yes, you know the one, 24 white sheep, one black one, a fashion embarrassment if there ever was one) and sheep “doodads and geegaws”, including sheep soap. One day, I saw an add for sheep in the paper. The Golden Goose and I loaded up our small children and took off to claim our sweet, wooly little lamb. When I got there, there were no lambs to be had, but a field of muddy, hairy, smelly sheep, crying and running from the farmer like he was Satan. (Turns out he was.) We had driven 92 miles with a daughter who had gotten carsick and thrown up in her brother’s hat. This caused her brother to cry because it was his favorite hat and he wanted it back, barf or not. Also, I have to stop a lot to go to the bathroom. I don’t know what it is about getting into the car with the Goose that makes me have to pee, but he says it is to counteract the skill with which he passes every car and a deep seated need to undermine his dominancy on the road. Whatever it was, we weren’t leaving without a sheep.

The farmer told me I could “pick me out one” and I chose one that looked exactly like every other sheep in the pasture. He then told me she would probably not like me for a while and that sheep weren’t all that smart or friendly. When I asked when and how she should be sheared, he just laughed and said “lady, these ain’t wool sheep, these is EATIN sheep”. As a vegetarian with veg kids, I almost passed out. Suddenly, all these sheep in the pasture needed to be saved. I cried, the kids cried, but the Goose steadfastly refused to buy all 300. So, we folded our large sheep into a dog crate made for a small dog. She none too happy about this. We put her in the back of the Goose’s truck for men who want to seem manly but really want a luxury car inside and she baaaahhed and cried all the way home. Upon stopping at a Dairy Queen to use the loo, she startled the entire ice cream eating crowd. After she was unloaded, though, she defied the evil sheep eating farmer by looking at me with love and commencing to follow me everywhere. She was lovely! That was 12 years ago. Clementine is still with me and is, by far, the most intelligent animal I’ve ever come across. This includes labs, all other dogs, small children, and my in-laws.

Many know my problem with animals wanting to come into the house. I’ve been described as the lady with animals in her house. This is not true! As a designer, I must say I have a great house. It’s clean and normal and really pretty. Things do get in from time to time though and one night when chaos was happening with my kids, kids’ friends, and adults with cocktails, Clementine got in. She doesn’t really look for me but goes straight to the pantry for cookies. She has a terrible sweet tooth. The Goose’s way of dealing with her is to herd her by standing behind her and bumping her towards the door, muttering and swearing (both of them). On this particular evening, the pizza delivery man arrived at our glass door just as the Goose, bent over Clementine, bumping her on the behind to move was trying to exit through our mud room. The man gaped while the Goose stammered an explanation for why he had a sheep in a scandalous rear chokehold, but the man didn’t want to know. He just took the cash and left in haste.

I don’t really have a zingy wrap up here, only to say that sheep are individuals, just like people. The fact that people eat lamb, one of the cruelest things I’ve ever heard (what they do to those babies before they hit your plate is unthinkable) makes me sad. Imagine your yellow lab cut into bits and covered in mint sauce and order a salad next time!